Review: Spellbound by Bishakh Som

Spellbound is the second project from Bishakh Som to cross our desks this year. In this memoir, Som creates a compelling case for how comics can explore the way we see ourselves vs. how we’re seen by the world.

Using the imagined character of Anjali, Som walks us through her everyday life after quitting her job as an architect and committing herself to finishing her comic project, Apsara Engine. There is a wandering effect created by passages that start in ‘the present’ of the story and go back to the main characters childhood. And there is an emphasis on how important this process of reflection and recreation of memories are for the creator. At times, that makes it a difficult experience for the reader, but one I’d recommend nevertheless.

In Spellbound she doesn’t seem to trust her reader in the same way as many of the stories of Apsara Engine, choosing to bookend the main narrative with a direct address to the reader that explains exactly what’s going on. It felt like this could have been dispelled and embedded in the narrative, woven through her pointed criticism of other parts of popular culture, or her internal struggle to reconcile her creative impulses with very real material demands.

As she mentions in the story, this book was created as a kind of after thought. A filling in of time after the long exhale of finishing another project. And it does feel like a shaking off of one skin for another, from the narrative, to the digital coloring, to the arching structure, jumping back and forth between points in time.

Som generously offers herself to the reader, asking that they see her the way she sees herself. In doing so she pushes and pulls at what comics are capable of, both formally and narratively. Spellbound sets a wonderful precedent for how memories can represented, reasserted and made closer to the internal reality of an individual. After reading this book digitally, I’m excited to hold the physical version and feel the weight of the story. I’m looking forward to the experience of flicking through the pages, easily going back to check if I missed something a few pages before, lingering on a specific page.

You can preorder Spellbound now through streetnoisebooks.com.